


Don't Say It's All (Been Lost)

by winter_rogue



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, not exactly a fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-23
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-14 21:19:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_rogue/pseuds/winter_rogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Stark’s talking about moving us into the mansion,” Natasha says casually, conversational, like this is any other day. That too is a kindness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Say It's All (Been Lost)

**Author's Note:**

> Angst_Bingo fill for "Secret Identities"
> 
> title pretty shamelessly ripped from Stars' "The Loose Ends Will Make Knots"

Clint takes some time to come to terms with everything that’s happened. The things that he did, that Loki coerced him into to doing, he remembers them. He remembers them because he’d been there, standing on the sidelines of his own consciousness. These actions are a part of him, misplaced guilt or no misplaced guilt, and they aren’t something you just bounce back from. So he takes a few weeks, and then a month.

He goes to the mandatory shrink sessions with his SHIELD assigned psychologist and he sits through a battery of tests, both scientific and physical. He answers questions, until his voice is rough and his mouth dry and even Clint has run out of words.

Nat railroads him into eating regularly, sitting with him in the Helicarrier cafeteria with the sort of cold, foreboding presence that dares anyone to stare too long or too hard. Then later, she kicks his ass in the gym every evening. She doesn’t ask him to talk about it, she doesn’t say much of anything at all, but it’s an unspoken understanding between them that if he should _need_ to talk about it she’s there. She’ll listen.

They have a memorial service for Phil. Clint stood carefully and unobtrusively to the side, Natasha next to him very subtly gripping his hand in hers. He let’s Captain America give the eulogy-- Phil would have liked it. When the others have drifted away he clutches a handful of dirt in his opposite hand, not quite willing to let it drop.

“Stark’s talking about moving us into the mansion,” Natasha says casually, conversational, like this is any other day. That too is a kindness.

“You going to take him up on the offer?”

She shrugs.

“I already have a home,” he reminds her (himself) and releases the dirt.

 

By the time he’s been cleared for the Initiative again, the rest of the Avengers have come back from their respective sabbaticals, and just in time for a new villain of the week to stir up a little chaos in downtown New York. Afterwards, Stark does in fact make his big invitation to them. Natasha moves in. Clint doesn’t. He tells a very earnest Steve Rogers that it has nothing to do with what happened with Loki, that he owns his own apartment in the city and it’s home. The guy seems to get it, he claps Clint on the shoulder and smiles softly, lets it lie.

Clint tries not to feel afraid of a place, starts going back to their-- well just to his apartment now. There’s something in him unwilling to give it up. It isn’t big or especially fancy but it’s nice and comfortable and they had bought it together, made it their own. It’s still full of Phil’s memorabilia and Clint’s house plants and there are suits fresh from the organic cleaner’s hanging in one half of the master closet, still in their bags.

He tries not to pull out one of those suits; to sleep with it, laid across the pillow next to him, smelling of lost familiar things. Or well, he tries not to do it more than once.

 

He’s never really clear on how Stark is the one that figures it out.

“Would you-- So, the thing is I’ve been trying to figure out if I would want to know or not. If I was you. The obvious answer is yes, I always want to know but I’m not like everyone. I guess this explains why you didn’t move in? Sort of? People have been telling me I’m insensitive my entire life, you know?” Tony doesn’t even take a breath to let him answer. “And I don’t really care. Isn’t it always better to state the obvious and go with the truth? I think so, but I understand it can be upsetting so I tried to consider it from your perspective.” He looks up at Clint, mouth a hard tight line and his eyes... surprisingly angry. “I think I would still want to know?”

“Know what?” Clint asks blankly, after a beat. He doesn’t acknowledge the way his heart picks up a beat.

Tony grimaces and shoves a shiny Stark tablet into his hands. “I stumbled upon him by accident. Well, technically JARVIS did. Read if it you want. Take the jet if you need to. I don’t know whether to be sorry or just-- shit.” He spins on his heel and disappears, most likely to hide in his downstairs lab.

He unlocks the tablet, of course he does. He leaves it open on his bed and takes the jet like Tony had offered.

 

He watches the front door of one Anthony Fischer from a rooftop a mile away. At nine in the morning the man going by the name Fischer leaves his neat house at the end of the street and drives to a local coffee shop. The baristas there think he’s some sort of academic or maybe a writer. He drinks a cup of coffee, eats a scone-- savory not sweet like Clint remembers --and either spend a couple hours reading a creased paperback or making annotations on a sheaf of paper.

He doesn’t ever get close enough to see what exactly the papers are for but he would recognize a Discworld novel from space.

The only sign of life _before_ as far as Clint can see, is the way the man who calls himself Fischer winces, face turning several shades of pale when a hapless young woman blunders into his chest on his way out the cafe door.

He seems to be living a quiet, unencumbered life. The house has living window plants for crying out loud.

Clint considers strolling up the walkway, ringing the doorbell, demanding answers or maybe falling to his knees and begging forgiveness. He thinks it might be easier if he could be properly angry but he can’t manage it, knows too keenly his own hand in the events leading up to now. Thinks forgiveness is too big a thing to ask here.

He boards a commercial flight back to New York. Natasha is waiting for him at the airport looking stoic and then confused. Her eyes flit, almost imperceptible, to the empty spaces around him like she’s sure she must be missing something. She presses her mouth into a firm, unhappy line.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Clint blinks slowly, he has no luggage to distract him. “I don’t think so.”

End


End file.
